District
Health Council chair says collaboration key for
LHINs
Kay says good consensus
from LHINs stakeholders at community workshop
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
- Roderick Benns
A recent ‘community workshop’ held
to identify community-based issues that will lead
to new Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs)
was recently held in Markham.
It was there that community health providers
and representatives from the Ministry of Health
and Long-Term Care found great success in establishing
stakeholder priorities, according to Stephen Kay,
chair of the Durham Haliburton Kawartha and Pine
Ridge District Health Council.
Kay says he thought the meeting was well run.
"It was an excellent process – very
collaborative," he says.
"The Ministry is saying this is a transformation,
not a tinkering of the system. It’s a real
attempt to find the community issues and I don’t
think this is window dressing," he says.
According to the provincial government, LHINs
will enhance and support local capacity to plan,
co-ordinate, integrate and fund the delivery of
health services at the community level.
LHINs will integrate health services, according
to the Province, but not by providing clinical
services. Instead, LHINs are expected to co-ordinate
service delivery. This means existing provider
organizations will continue to be relied upon
to deliver services.
At the meeting, Kay says participants had to
self-identify the issues.
On poster-size paper participants identified
45 different items of interest which led to 45
different discussion groups. Then, participants
voted for whatever their top choices were among
the many points that were made.
From this large list the top five administrative
points and the top five patient care points were
culled.
Kay notes how often the idea of a "common
record" came up amongst group participants,
ensuring its top-10 status. Essentially, this
would be a single file that would follow the patient
no matter what community health service the patient
was accessing.
Another top-10 issue was the rural-urban differences
that make up many of the suggested LHIN boundaries.
For instance, the suggested LHIN that would encompass
Peterborough would include northern villages like
Haliburton along with the multicultural realities
of Scarborough, a Greater Toronto Area urban community.
Kay says someone from the group commented that,
as an example, there is a high school in Scarborough
in which 100 different languages are spoken by
the students.
"So we have to look at delivering services
where there are great cultural differences,"
says Kay.
Other top-10 points the group decided upon were
public education and stakeholder engagement, mental
health, aging in place (identifying where the
most appropriate place is for each individual)
and the integration of acute and long-term care.
Kay says now 14 "workbook responses"
will be created representing the 14 LHINs, as
suggested by the Province.
The district health council chair says hearing
so many of the same concerns from the various
community partners shows how valuable it is to
have everyone working together.
"People need to be working together to create
these changes. This is really what will enable
the system to change," he says.
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